Tag: life

#PoeticAnswers 37 – When Love Is Gone, Where Does It Go?

We thought it was a mutual agreement
When we were taking our hearts back.

Words fell like knives,
Sharp, precise, and exact,
Cutting the weights away from our souls.
Why waste our time letting love go to waste?

Your tears turned your eyes
Into stained-glass windows,
Tinted, tainted and crystalline
Never letting us see each other.
Or the truth.

I never broke your heart,
It was always kept safe,
Cushioned with silk and cottonbuds
And locked away in a box.
I was too afraid to break it,
So I never looked at it.

When you gave back my heart,
It was used and half empty.
Cracked and fractured,
Love leaking like
Tears too scared to fall.
Too afraid to be lost forever.

You always said
You could get drunk from me.
And though that may have been the case,
You didn’t like the taste.
I was the worst thing for you.

But you were my addict
And I didn’t want to be alone.
So we saw the world through rose-tinted glasses
Not knowing love and codependency
Were the same colour.

We never poured ourselves out to one another,
Maybe if we had, things would have been better.
Experience and taste each other,
Getting a flavour of sweet reality and real emotion,
Taking the time to find out what love is supposed to be.

Or maybe it would only make things worse.
Trapped in a vicious circle of reliance,
Wasting each other, taking us for granted.
Drinking to make ourselves feel better
Until we were both empty.

Until we were two glass hearts,
Afraid to beat because
Trying to love each other
Would only make us break.

When love is gone, it goes to waste.
But love wasn’t there.
We just wasted away instead.

Question from Katja P. from Facebook, and Arcade Fire.

#PoeticAnswers 34 – What Do We Have To Eat?

Spaghetti Bolognese: 

A Poetic Recipe for Disaster

You will need:
Positive thoughts,
To be yourself
And denial to garnish.

You will also need:
A tin of chopped tomatoes
Passata,
A red onion,
A red pepper,
Mushrooms,
(If you can get a red mushroom
You can keep the theme going,)
Vegetarian mince (Almost definitely Quorn)
A beef Oxo cube
Black pepper, basil, oregano
And red wine.
Because it’s good for the soul.

Step One:
Have a glass of wine.

Step Two:
Have another glass of wine.

Step Three:
Begin by sautéing your
Onion, pepper and mushrooms.
Realise you have not cut your
Onion, pepper and mushrooms.
Realise you don’t know what
Sauté actually means,
Cut your fingers several times as you
Hastily attempt to cut the
Onion, pepper and mushrooms
Then throw the bloody mess
Into a pot with some red wine.

Step Four:
In a different pot,
Take your Quorn mince,
That beef Oxo cube,
And that pinch of denial
And throw them all together.

Step Five
Hate yourself.
Almost as much as you hate your girlfriend
For making you cut meat out of your diet,
But mostly hate yourself for trying to make it taste the same.
Tell yourself it tastes the same if you close your eyes.
Cry into the pot to give your dry ingredients something to stop them burning
And to add some salt to season.

Step Six:
You haven’t had a glass of wine in a while
Have a glass of wine.

Step Seven:
Halfway through cooking
And thinking everything is okay
And thinking you’re a competent human,
Realise you did not put spaghetti in the ingredients list,
And descend into a perturbing, pasta induced panic.
Take the cold still waters of you soul,
Place on your head and let your rage boil.
Accept this is futile,
Boil a kettle,
Take the kettle out of the pan
Hit yourself with the pan,
Fill the pan with water and place over heat
And question your education and life choices
That have led to this moment.

Step Eight:
Take your slightly alcoholic
And now mostly burnt vegetables
And throw in the passata and tinned tomatoes.
Season to taste.
Discover it tastes awful.
Add more wine.
Attempt to season further,
Throw literally everything in your herb collection
Into this raging ragu
Cry so much that it literally only tastes of
Your salty tears and wine.

Step Nine:
Add the pot of
Meat substitute and denial into the mix.

Step Ten
Empathise with your pasta,
You are currently as drained as your pasta
Both physically and emotionally.
Watch the water drain away
Into the dark void.
Wonder to yourself:
“How did it come to this?”

Step Eleven:
Be disgusted.
With everything.
Observe the mess that you’ve made,
Realise this is a perfect metaphor for your life.

Finally:
Give up,
Order Domino’s
Have another glass of wine.

Question from Justine F. from Facebook

#PoeticAnswers 33 – Who Do You Tell When You Eat A Banana?

I don’t tell a soul.
I just breathe a sigh as I
Look into their eyes

A private moment,
Awkward, erotic, secret.
This is ours to keep.

As the moment ends,
They leave, confused and hungry.
They don’t tell a soul

Question from Michael Clark from Facebook

#PoeticAnswers 31 – When Did You First Realise Your Parents Don’t Know Everything and Can’t Fix Everything?

I remember being small,
Not emotionally or mentally,
Just in terms of being a child.

When I was sick, my dad
Would make his signature soup.
It was nothing overly special,
Chicken, rice and vegetables,
But it tasted like being better.

When I hurt myself, my mum
Would pick me up and clean my cuts
With the weird white cream
in the non-descript bottle,
Kiss it better and send me on my way.

It was just moisturiser,
And maybe it’s that over exposure
That’s made who I am today,
Soft and gentle,
Not much of a fighter.

But my dad didn’t like that,
I didn’t overly like that
Because boys were tough,
Rough and tumble, branch and bramble,
Carefree cuts and badge shaped bruises.

From boy scouts to black belts,
I tried to earn whatever rank it would take
To feel like I was on my way to
Being the best I can be.
But I wasn’t doing it for me.

Because I still remember
When I was six years old
My dad was rushed into hospital.

A work accident,
He went from tree surgeon
To needing a surgeon
And I was too young to understand
What hemiplegia meant.

Mum’s magic cream cculdn’t make
The pain go away
And he couldn’t get the special soup
Because he couldn’t get to the kitchen
Because the doctor wouldn’t let him.

Seeing this man who’d been
My idol and rock
Suddenly become bandaged rubble,
Putting on a brave face for me
When he knew he might never walk again.

So he would just lie there,
Being strong for all of us.
Like the rock in the river
Just before the waterfall.
Something to cling and climb onto.

Never showing signs of erosion,
Never crumbling to sand to become part of the riverbed.
Fighting time and tide to finally
Find his feet and run and jump the best he can
Because he was the rock on which he built his family.

I never really wanted to fight,
And this pansy-poetical, theatrical life
Wasn’t really what he had in mind.

He might not understand what it is I do,
He might not understand how he’s shaped me,
I’ve got blackbelts and trophies for taekwondo
But he was the one who tought me
What it really means to fight.

We grew up and grew apart,
I learned I am not the people my parents are,
And I might never be what they expected
Because I’m a lot of dirty words to them
But I’m okay with that.

There’s a lot of me that
They might not agree on because
They’re rocks, strong and sturdy,
But they don’t move,
They don’t change.

But to go through that,
They might not like theatre
But it was a performance I’ll never forget.

They’re still the strongest people I know.

Question from Jasmyne M. from Facebook

#PoeticAnswers 29 – Where Do Butterflies Sleep?

He woke in the spring.
He did not feel beautiful.
He cried and took wing.

His chrysalis gone,
Warm summer grass became bed,
Clinging on, he slept.

Leaves fell with autumn,
The grass wilted and skies greyed,
He was left homeless.

Tired, he sought refuge.
A crevice, a bed of stone.
Then the winter came.

Question from Lucero I. from Facebook

#PoeticAnswers 27 – How Many Ways Can You Think of to Time Travel?

Be taken back by a teacher,
An adept modern-day magician,
Performing and informing of
The importances of yesteryear.

Immerse yourself in the books of yesterday,
Let each word carefully stack and build,
Let your imagination craft and succumb
To this portal to the old world.

Take the time to listen,
Let the old rhythm take control
Dance to the sway of Sinatra or Holliday
Appreciate the class and the moment.

Start up the engine
Of an eighties icon.
Drive back to the future
With an old man complaining about your children.

You could sacrifice your life for companionship,
Journey with a stranger
And learn the insanity of the truth
While doctoring the timestream.

Think harder than you’ve ever thunk before,
Take the time to remember your life.
Enjoy the comedy, learn from the misery,
But do not let yourself get trapped in the past.

Or give in to inevitability.
You can choose to run forward to the future
Or just choose to stand still,
And let time slowly pass you by.

Question from Michael C. from Facebook.

#PoeticAnswers 23 – Why Do People Keep Trying To Tell Me How To Be A Girl?

Because they have an image of you
Based on statue from ancient times.
When women were a delicate flower,
They needed protected or saved.
When they were rescued, they were enslaved
And treated like a trophy or property.

Because people want you to:
Be skinny, be curvy,
Be representative of male ideology
Succumb to atypical sexist idolatry
“Because that’s how you’re supposed to be”
But girl, you are not set in stone.

You are flesh and blood,
You were born naked,
So make your skin your tapestry,
And let your body be your home.
Build it and break it and
Paint it and decorate it however you want,

Because it’s yours and no one else’s.
Let no one else tell you
How to run your body.
Love is free so be free
Take the time to love yourself
And anyone else you damn well please
In any way you damn well please.

Be what you want to be,
Drop out of school or take the degree,
Be free, be the next Joan of Arc or Marie Curie,
Because without brilliant women, where would we be?
Without computers, without Kevlar, without basic telecommunication,
We’d still be Victorian, so be victorious
In arts, finance, technology or science.

Be the next Amanda Palmer or Lise Meitner,
The next Ellen MacArthur or Otep Shamaya,
Musician or physicist,
Athlete or writer,
And do not let anything get in your way
But if anything tries, just know you are stronger.

You do not have to
Make his sandwiches, his home or his baby.
You don’t not have to
Be a nurse, be quiet or be a secretary.
You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be.
Because nonconformity does not affect femininity.

This is not feminist propaganda,
This is an affirmation of humanity.
No one can tell you how to be a girl,
But if they try, just remember:
They’re the one with the problem,
Not you.

Question from Jaymie B. from Facebook

#PoeticAnswers 22 – What’s In A Name?

Letters.
Carefully chosen and crafted
Like the bricks and cornices
Of a mighty religious building.
Arranged with precision and diligence,
Forming shape and definition.

Meaning.
Granting concept and context to you.
Something to aspire to,
Something that gives you definition,
A guiding purpose
Like a familiar light that leads you back home.

Power.
A name can be called upon
In times of love or trouble,
Bringing light or fear.
Or pleasure.
As they scream out your name
In lieu of their God.

Beginnings,
Because a name is a product of being born,
A nuanced newness, symbolic of birth and rebirth
The first step into building yourself
Or embracing the you you never knew.
A new chance at reality and physicality,
Your personal Genesis.

#PoeticAnswers 21 – Why Do I Buy Books Faster Than I Can Read Them?

In my room,
I have a portal to another world
And a solar system on my shelf.
A personal Eden
Built of recycled trees
And knowledge devoid of sin.

From whirlwind romances
To hideous creatures,
From nightmareish circuses
To heavenly prisons,
I have scoured, sought and salvaged
To create the greatest collection of all.

I am the Tolkein dragon of today,
But I don’t wear my leather-bound armour
And my treasure isn’t made of gold.
A modern day book-wyrm,
Fiercely protective and inherently selfish
When it comes to my “babies”.

They are more than just trophies,
They don’t just hang on my wall
Like a perverse, forgotten decoration.
Despite the landscape of spines
And the paperback mountains that litter the floor
I do pick up my portable adventures to the unknown.

I have dared to cross Charybdis,
And traversed the mountains of Transylvania,
I have sought sanctuary in the halls of Notre-Dame,
And battled basilisks and defeated death.
Stared down demon clowns and walked into the wild,
And despite the fear and danger, I always want more.

My vast wealth is now only measurable
In Penguin Classics and First Editions.
My desire for creativity without being creative
Has resulted in always wanting more,
A prison with bars made of pages,
A literal literary addiction.

So my wings, claws and eyes
Are always open wide,
Hunting for the next treasure
For my private and precious collection.
My hunger is ravenous, my thirst is unquenched.
No bookshop is safe.

Question from Audrey J. from Facebook